Frederick I of Sweden
Frederick I, Fredrik I, was prince consort of Sweden from 1718 to 1720, and King of Sweden from 1720 until his death and Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel from 1730. He was the son of Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, in 1692 the young prince made his Grand Tour to the Dutch Republic, in 1695 to the Italian Peninsula and he studied in Geneva. After this he had a career, leading the Hessian troops as Lieutenant General in the War of Spanish Succession on the side of the Dutch. He was defeated in 1703 in the Battle of Speyerbach, in 1706 he was again defeated by the French in the Battle of Castiglione. Both in 1716 and 1718 he joined the campaign of Charles XII of Sweden against Norway and he married his second wife, Princess Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden, in 1715. Frederick succeeded her on the throne, elected by the Swedish Estates and he was the only Swedish prince consort there had been to date. Frederick I had much influence during the reign of his spouse, but after the aristocracy had regained power during the wars with Russia, he became not so much powerless as uninterested in affairs of state.
In 1723, he tried to strengthen royal authority, but after he failed and he did not even sign official documents, instead a stamp of his signature was used. He devoted most of his time to hunting and love affairs and his marriage to Queen Ulrika Eleonora was childless, but he had several children by his mistress, Hedvig Taube. Some historians have suggested that the bullet which killed his brother-in-law Charles XII of Sweden in 1718 was actually fired by Fredericks aide. Charles had been an authoritarian and demanding ruler, one reason the Swedish Estates elected Frederick was because he was taken to be fairly weak, the defeats suffered by Charles XII in the Great Northern War ended Swedens position as a first-rank European power. Under Frederick, this had to be accepted, Sweden had to cede Estonia and Livonia to Russia in the Treaty of Nystad, in 1721. In 1723 Frederick rewarded the military inventor Sven Åderman with the estate of Halltorps on the island of Öland, as a king, he was not very respected.
When he was crowned, it was said, King Charles we recently buried and it is said about him, that although a lot of great achievements in the countrys development happened during his reign, he never had anything to do with them himself. When he died, Carl Gustaf Tessin said about him, Under the reign of King Frederick, the merchant business has flourished – he has never encouraged it with a single coin. The Stockholm Palace has been built – he has never been enough to look at it. Neither did he have anything to do with the founding of the first Swedish speaking theater at Bollhuset during his reign, one of his few important policies was the banning of duels. On 23 February 1748 Frederick I instituted the three Swedish royal orders of the Seraphim, of the Sword and of the North Star, Frederick became Landgrave of Hesse only in 1730, ten years after becoming King of Sweden
Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, scientist, inventor and naturalist. He is best remembered for his paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution. Peale was born in 1741 in Chester, Queen Annes County, Maryland and he had a younger brother, James Peale. Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was thirteen years old, upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop, when his Loyalist creditors discovered he had joined the Sons of Liberty, they conspired to bankrupt his business. He was also, not very good at saddle making and he tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius, John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, there, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time became a noted artist.
Peales enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776 and his estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, while in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in years and he served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist, while he did portraits of scores of historic figures, he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, in January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group, a portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian.
It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U. S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, known as Peales American Museum and it housed a diverse collection of botanical and archaeological specimens. Most notably, the museum contained a variety of birds which Peale himself acquired. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century, the Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton that Peale found in New York State
Seminole
The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida. The word Seminole is a corruption of cimarrón, a Spanish term for runaway or wild one, Seminole culture is largely derived from that of the Creek, the most important ceremony is the Green Corn Dance, other notable traditions include use of the black drink and ritual tobacco. As the Seminole adapted to Florida environs, they developed local traditions, such as the construction of open-air, historically the Seminole spoke Mikasuki and Creek, both Muskogean languages. The Seminole became increasingly independent of other Creek groups and established their own identity and they developed a thriving trade network during the British and second Spanish periods. The tribe expanded considerably during this time, and was supplemented from the late 18th century by free blacks and escaped slaves who settled near. The latter became known as Black Seminoles, although they kept their own Gullah culture, after the United States achieved independence, its settlers increased pressure on Seminole lands, leading to the Seminole Wars.
The Seminole were first confined to a large inland reservation by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, by 1842, most Seminoles and Black Seminoles had been removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Today residents of the reservation are enrolled in the federally recognized Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, perhaps fewer than 200 Seminoles remained in Florida after the Third Seminole War, but they fostered a resurgence in traditional customs and a culture of staunch independence. In the late 19th century, the Florida Seminole re-established limited relations with the U. S. government, few Seminole moved to reservations until the 1940s, they reorganized their government and received federal recognition in 1957 as the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The more traditional people near the Tamiami Trail received federal recognition as the Miccosukee Tribe in 1962, old crafts and traditions were revived in the mid 20th century as Seminoles began seeking tourism dollars when Americans began to travel more on the countrys growing highway system.
The word Seminole is derived from cimarrón, a Spanish term for runaway or wild one, the people who constituted the nucleus of this Florida group either chose to leave their tribe or were banished. At one time the terms renegade and outcast were used to describe this status and they never signed a peace treaty with the United States. Native American refugees from northern wars, such as the Yuchi and Yamasee after the Yamasee War in South Carolina and they spoke primarily Hitchiti, of which Mikasuki is a dialect, which is the primary traditional language spoken today by Miccosukee in Florida. In Cuba the Florida tribes suffered high mortality due to disease, in Florida, the Creeks had earlier intermingled with the Choctaw and other few remaining indigenous people. The Seminole were a tribe made up of mostly Lower Creeks from Georgia. At that time, numerous refugees of the Red Sticks migrated south and they were Creek-speaking Muscogee, and were the ancestors of most of the Creek-speaking Seminole.
In addition, a few hundred escaped African-American slaves had settled near the Seminole towns and, to an extent, Native Americans from other tribes. The unified Seminole spoke two languages and Mikasuki, two among the Muskogean languages family, Creek became the dominant language for political and social discourse, so Mikasuki speakers learned it if participating in high-level negotiations
Chilean Army
The Chilean Army is the land arm of the Military of Chile. This 50, 000-strong army is organized into six divisions, a special operations brigade, in recent years, and after several major reequipment programs, the Chilean Army has become one of the most technologically advanced and professional armies in America. The Chilean Army is mostly supplied with equipment from Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, France, the Army of the Kingdom of Chile was created on December 2,1810 by order of the First National Government Junta of Chile. The army was involved in the Independence War, which was fought against royalist troops in battles such as Yerbas Buenas, San Carlos, Rancagua, Chacabuco. The Armys first commander-in-chief was José Miguel Carrera, after obtaining independence from Spain, the newly formed Republic reorganized its military structure by creating the Military Academy of Chile, which was founded by General OHiggins in 1817. Diego Portales set up a militia, the Guardia Nacional.
The militia was created in 1825 but Portales developed this parallel army to compensate the armys might, the Chilean Conscription Law of 1900 marked the beginning of the end of the Guardia Nacional. During the War of the Pacific, many high-ranking officers won valuable insights into the state of the army and became aware that the army required rebuilding. Other factor that supported the emulation, the deliberate systematic imitation of the technology, organisation. The emulation was backed by a coalition of civil and military leaders. Chile hired a French military training mission in 1858, and the Chilean legation in Berlin was instructed to find a mission during the War of the Pacific in 1881. But large-scale emulation of the Prussian Army began in 1886 with the appointment of Captain Emil Körner, appointed were 36 Prussian officers to train officer cadets in the Chilean Military Academy. The emulation was focused in armaments, officer recruitment and instruction and it was extended into military logistics and medical services, retirement, salary regulation and even uniforms, marching styles, helmets and military music.
Armaments, Prior to 1883, the army was equipped with a variety of rifles, mostly French, from 1892 to 1902, the Chilean-Argentine Arms Race, marked the peak of Chilean arms purchase. 100,000 Mauser rifles and new Krupp artillery was bought for 3,000,000 DM in 1893,2,000,000 DM in 1895 and 15,000,000 DM in 1898, ammunition factories and small arms manufacturing plants were established. Conscription, Like others armies in South America, Chile had had an army of long-term service officers and soldiers. For a modern and technically trained officer corps, the best alumni were candidates for general staff service. By the mid-1890s Körner organized the courses for a Noncommissioned Officers School, during the 1891 Chilean Civil War Körner was removed from duty by José Manuel Balmaceda
Swedish Armed Forces
It consists of, the Swedish Army, the Swedish Air Force and the Swedish Navy, with addition of a military reserve force, the Home Guard. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden is traditionally attributed as Honorary General and Admiral à la suite, wars with Russia culminated in the Finnish War, with Sweden losing Finland. In 2010, peacetime conscription was abolished, replacing it with armed forces including the Home Guard – National Security Force until 2018. Units from the Swedish Armed Forces are currently on deployment in international operations either actively or as military observers, including Afghanistan as part of ISAF. Moreover, Swedish Armed Forces contribute as the nation for an EU Battle Group approximately once every three years. Wars with Russia culminated in the Finnish War, with Sweden losing Finland, in 2010, peacetime conscription was abolished, replacing it with volunteer armed forces including the Home Guard – National Security Force. In March 2017 the Swedish government decided to reintroduce military conscription from 1 January 2018, in 2016 the Swedish armed forces included elements of gender theory into its tactical training.
The Swedish Armed Forces have four main tasks, To assert the territorial integrity of Sweden, to defend the country if attacked by a foreign nation. To support the community in case of disasters. To deploy forces to international peace support operations, Sweden aims to have the option of remaining neutral in case of proximate war. However, Sweden cooperates militarily with a number of foreign countries, in 2008 a partnership was initiated between the Nordic countries to, among other things, increase the capability of joint action, and this led to the creation of NORDEFCO. As a response to the military cooperation the defence proposition of 2009 stated that Sweden will not remain passive if a Nordic country or a member of the European Union were attacked. However, after the 2008 South Ossetia war territorial defense was again emphasized. Until most units could not be mobilized within one year, in 2009 the Minister for Defence stated that in the future all of the armed forces must capable of fully mobilizing within one week.
In 2013, after Russian air exercises in close proximity to the Swedish border were widely reported, the Supreme Commander is a four-star general or flag officer that is the agency head of the Swedish Armed Forces, and is the highest ranking professional officer on active duty. The Supreme Commander in turn reports, normally through the Minister for Defence, directly to the Government of Sweden, which in turn answers to the Riksdag. The Swedish Armed Forces consists of three branches, the Army, the Air Force and the Navy, with addition of the Home Guard. Since 1994, the first three branches are organized within a single unified government agency, headed by the Supreme Commander
Sallet
The sallet was a war helmet that replaced the bascinet in Italy and northern Europe and Hungary during the mid-15th century. In Italy and England the armet helmet was popular, the origin of the sallet seems to have been in Italy where the term celata is first recorded in an inventory of the arms and armour of the Gonzaga family dated to 1407. In essence the earliest sallets were a variant of the bascinet, the barbute or barbuta was a related helmet appearing in Italy at much the same time as the sallet. Unlike the sallet, the fully developed barbute consciously copied elements of the Classical Corinthian helmets of ancient times, the sallet became popular in France and the Netherlands through contact with Italy and eventually was adopted in Germany. Regional styles developed, which were catered for by the great armour manufacturing centres of northern Italy, though a sallet, or complete armour, might be German in style it could have been of Italian manufacture, or vice versa. The German sallet may have been the product of the melding of influences from the Italian sallet and the deep-skulled German war-hat, Italian sallets lost their integral face protection and became open-faced helmets with gracefully curved surfaces.
In this simple state they were favoured by more lightly armed troops, especially archers and crossbowmen, such helmets would have been worn with a stiffened mail collar, termed a standard, which protected the throat and neck. In the period 1450-1460 a distinctive German style of sallet appeared, one characteristic that distinguishes early German sallets from German sallets up to c.1495, is the length of the helmet tail, which became more pronounced over time. The front of these helmets sometimes extended down to cover the upper-face, other versions retained the same outline, but the upper-face was protected by a movable half-visor. Most German sallets were worn with a separate scoop-shaped plate gorget, called a bevor, most needed no added ventilation holes, as there was a natural gap where the visor or front of the helmet overlapped the bevor near the wearers mouth. By the mid 15th century a variety of sallet had evolved in England. It was usually worn with a bevor and had similar facial protection to, and frontal appearance as, the German sallet.
In many ways it was intermediate between the German and Italian forms, French sallets were very similar to the English-Burgundian type and all have been classed as short-tailed sallets. In the last generations of German sallets the bevor was articulated from the pivot as the visor. Initially the bevor was attached inside the skull, when the long tail at the rear of the helmet was eventually shortened, from c. 1495, these sallets became virtually indistinguishable from close helmets, the German-style sallet was the model for the World War I German Stahlhelm, whereas the kettle hat inspired the contemporary British and French helmets. The sallet was the forerunner of the modern combat helmet and firefighters helmet, John The Collecting Man, D. McKay, New York. Bull, North, Tony, An Historical Guide To Arms & Armor, the Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, Vol. 13/14 pp. 20–29 Published by, The Walters Art Museum Stable
Osceola
Osceola, born as Billy Powell, became an influential leader of the Seminole in Florida. Of mixed parentage, Scots-Irish, and English, he was raised as a Creek by his mother and they migrated to Florida when he was a child, with other Red Stick refugees, after their defeat in 1814 in the Creek Wars. In 1836, Osceola led a group of warriors in the Seminole resistance during the Second Seminole War. He became an adviser to Micanopy, the chief of the Seminole from 1825 to 1849. Osceola led the war resistance until he was captured in September 1837 by deception, under a flag of truce, because of his renown, Osceola attracted visitors as well as leading portrait painters. He died a few months in prison at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, Osceola was named Billy Powell at birth in 1804 in the Creek village of Talisi. Now known as Tallassee, Alabama, in current Elmore County, the people in the town of Tallassee. were mixed-blood Native American/English/Irish/Scottish, and some were black.
His mother was Polly Coppinger, a Creek woman, and his father was William Powell, Polly was the daughter of Ann McQueen and Jose Coppinger. Ann McQueen was mixed-race Creek, her father, James McQueen, was Scots-Irish, Ann was probably the sister or aunt of Peter McQueen, a prominent Creek leader and warrior. Like his mother, Billy was raised in the Creek tribe, like his father, Billys maternal grandfather James McQueen was a trader, in 1714 he was the first European to trade with the Creek in Alabama. He stayed in the area as a fur trader and married into the Creek tribe and he is buried in the Indian cemetery in Franklin, near a Methodist Missionary Church for the Creek. In 1814, after the Red Stick Creek were defeated by United States forces, Polly took Osceola and moved with other Creek refugees from Alabama to Florida, in adulthood, as part of the Seminole, Powell was given his name Osceola. This is a form of the Creek Asi-yahola, the combination of asi, the ceremonial black drink made from the yaupon holly.
In 1821, the United States acquired Florida from Spain, more European-American settlers started moving in, encroaching on the Seminole. As an adult, Osceola took two wives, as did some other Creek and Seminole leaders, with them, he had at least five children. One of his wives was an African American, and he opposed the enslavement of free people. Through the 1820s and the turn of the decade, American settlers kept up pressure on the US government to remove the Seminole from Florida to make way for their desired agricultural development. In 1832, a few Seminole chiefs signed the Treaty of Paynes Landing, according to legend, Osceola stabbed the treaty with his knife, although there are no contemporary reports of this
History of Australia
The history of Australia refers to the history of the area and people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Aboriginal Australians are believed to have first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago, the artistic and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history. The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606, twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland. Macassan trepangers visited Australias northern coasts after 1720, possibly earlier, a First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent, Indigenous Australians were greatly weakened and their numbers diminished by introduced diseases and conflict with the colonists during this period.
Gold rushes and agricultural industries brought prosperity, autonomous Parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the six British colonies from the mid-19th century. The colonies voted by referendum to unite in a federation in 1901, Australia fought on the side of Britain in the two world wars and became a long-standing ally of the United States when threatened by Imperial Japan during World War II. Trade with Asia increased and an immigration program received more than 6.5 million migrants from every continent. The ancestors of Indigenous Australians are believed to have arrived in Australia 40,000 to 60,000 years ago and they developed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, established enduring spiritual and artistic traditions and used stone technologies. There is considerable discussion as to the route taken by the first colonisers. People appear to have arrived by sea during a period of glaciation, the journey still required sea travel however, making them amongst the worlds earlier mariners.
Given that the likely landfall regions have been under around 50 metres of water for the last 15,000 years, the earliest known human remains were found at Lake Mungo, a dry lake in the southwest of New South Wales. Remains found at Mungo suggest one of the worlds oldest known cremations, According to Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and it remains a prominent feature of Australian Aboriginal art. Aboriginal art is believed to be the oldest continuing tradition of art in the world, evidence of Aboriginal art can be traced back at least 30,000 years and is found throughout Australia. In terms of age and abundance, cave art in Australia is comparable to that of Lascaux, manning Clark wrote that the ancestors of the Aborigines were slow to reach Tasmania, probably owing to an ice barrier existing across the South East of the continent.
The Aborigines, he noted, did not develop agriculture, probably owing to a lack of seed bearing plants, but trepang fisherman did reach the north coast, which they called Marege or land of the trepang. For centuries, Makassan trade flourished with Aborigines on Australias north coast, the greatest population density for Aborigines developed in the southern and eastern regions, the River Murray valley in particular
Steel
Steel is an alloy of iron and other elements, primarily carbon, that is widely used in construction and other applications because of its high tensile strength and low cost. Steels base metal is iron, which is able to take on two forms, body centered cubic and face centered cubic, depending on its temperature. It is the interaction of those allotropes with the elements, primarily carbon. In the body-centred cubic arrangement, there is an atom in the centre of each cube. Carbon, other elements, and inclusions within iron act as hardening agents that prevent the movement of dislocations that otherwise occur in the lattices of iron atoms. The carbon in steel alloys may contribute up to 2. 1% of its weight. Steels strength compared to pure iron is possible at the expense of irons ductility. With the invention of the Bessemer process in the mid-19th century and this was followed by Siemens-Martin process and Gilchrist-Thomas process that refined the quality of steel. With their introductions, mild steel replaced wrought iron, further refinements in the process, such as basic oxygen steelmaking, largely replaced earlier methods by further lowering the cost of production and increasing the quality of the product.
Today, steel is one of the most common materials in the world and it is a major component in buildings, tools, automobiles, machines and weapons. Modern steel is generally identified by various grades defined by assorted standards organizations, the noun steel originates from the Proto-Germanic adjective stakhlijan, which is related to stakhla. The carbon content of steel is between 0. 002% and 2. 1% by weight for plain iron–carbon alloys and these values vary depending on alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, tungsten, carbon and so on. Basically, steel is an alloy that does not undergo eutectic reaction. In contrast, cast iron does undergo eutectic reaction, too little carbon content leaves iron quite soft and weak. Carbon contents higher than those of steel make an alloy, commonly called pig iron, while iron alloyed with carbon is called carbon steel, alloy steel is steel to which other alloying elements have been intentionally added to modify the characteristics of steel. Common alloying elements include, nickel, molybdenum, titanium, tungsten and niobium.
Additional elements are important in steel, sulfur and traces of oxygen and copper. Alloys with a higher than 2. 1% carbon content, depending on other element content, cast iron is not malleable even when hot, but it can be formed by casting as it has a lower melting point than steel and good castability properties
Officer (armed forces)
An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. In this sense, officers are not enlisted, but hold appointments from their government that typically remain in force indefinitely unless resigned, the proportion of officers varies greatly. Officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel, in 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13. 7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, however, armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers, in the early twentieth century, the Spanish army had the highest proportion of officers of any European army, at 12. 5%. Within a nations armed forces, armies tend to have a proportion of officers. For example,13. 9% of British army personnel and 22. 2% of the RAF personnel were officers in 2013, having officers is one requirement for combatant status under the laws of war, though these officers need not have obtained an official commission or warrant.
Commissioned officers are typically the only persons, in an armed forces environment, a superior officer is an officer with a higher rank than another officer, who is a subordinate officer relative to the superior. Non-commissioned officers in positions of authority can be said to have control or charge rather than command per se, many advanced militaries require university degrees as a prerequisite for commissioning, even from the enlisted ranks. In the Israel Defense Forces, a university degree is a requirement for an officer to advance to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the IDF often sponsors the studies for its majors, while aircrew and naval officers obtain academic degrees as a part of their training programmes. In the United Kingdom, there are three routes of entry for British Armed Forces officers, the first, and primary route are those who receive their commission directly into the officer grades following completion at their relevant military academy. The third route is similar to the second, in that they convert from an enlisted to a commission, but these are taken from the highest ranks of SNCOs.
LE officers, whilst holding the same Queens Commission, generally work in different roles from the DE officers, in the infantry, a number of Warrant Officer Class 1s are commissioned as LE officers. For Royal Navy and Royal Air Force officer candidates, a 30-week period at Britannia Royal Naval College or a 30-week period at RAF College Cranwell, Royal Marines officers receive their training in the Command Wing of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines during a grueling 15-month course. The courses consist of not only tactical and combat training, but leadership, etiquette, until the Cardwell Reforms of 1871, commissions in the British Army were purchased by officers. The Royal Navy, operated on a more meritocratic, or at least socially mobile, AOCS also included the embedded Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate and Naval Aviation Cadet programs. NAVCADs were personnel who held associates degrees, but lacked bachelors degrees, nAVCADs would complete the entire AOCS program, but would not be commissioned until completion of flight training and receiving their wings.
After their initial tour, they would be assigned to a college or university full-time for no more than two years in order to complete their bachelors degree
Prehistoric Ireland
The prehistoric period covers the Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age societies of Ireland. For much of Europe, the record begins when the Romans invaded, as Ireland was not invaded by the Romans its historical record starts later. During the Last Glacial Maximum, Ireland was an Arctic wasteland, the Midland General Glaciation was originally thought to have covered two thirds of the country with ice. Subsequent evidence from the past 50 years has shown this to be untrue, the early part of the Holocene had a climate that was inhospitable to most European animals and plants. Human occupation was unlikely, though fishing possible, during the period between 17,500 and 12,000 years ago, a warmer period, the Bølling-Allerød, allowed the rehabitation of northern areas of Europe by roaming hunter-gatherers. Genetic evidence suggests this reoccupation began in southwestern Europe and faunal remains suggest a refugium in Iberia that extended up into southern France, the original attraction to the north during the pre-boreal period would be species like reindeer and aurochs.
Some sites as far north as Sweden inhabited earlier than 10,000 years ago suggest that humans might have used glacial termini as places from which they hunted migratory game. These factors and ecological changes brought humans to the edge of the northernmost ice-free zones of Europe by the onset of the Holocene and this included regions close to Ireland. Britain and Ireland were joined by a bridge, but because this link was cut so early into the warm period few temperate terrestrial flora or fauna crossed into Ireland. The bridge was gone by 14,000 BC, which is before the most recent stadial. The lowered sea level joined Britain to continental Europe, this persisted much longer, on the eastern side of the Irish Sea, a site dated to 11,000 BC was discovered that indicated people were in the area eating a marine diet including shellfish. These modern humans may have colonised Ireland after crossing the southern, now ice-free, land bridge that linked south-east Ireland and this land bridge existed until about 14,000 BC.
These people may have few resources outside of coastal shellfishing and acorns. However, a bone, found in Alice and Gwendoline Cave, County Clare in 1903. It shows clear signs of cut marks with stone tools, and has been dated to 12,500 years ago. To this day snakes have not made their way back to Ireland, the return of freezing conditions during the Younger Dryas, that occurred in Ireland between 10,900 BC and 9700 BC, may have depopulated Ireland. During the Younger Dryas sea-levels continued to rise and no land bridge between Great Britain and Ireland ever returned. The last ice age came to an end in Ireland about 10–12 thousand years ago, the earliest evidence of human occupation after the retreat of the ice has been dated to around 8000 BC
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